Karachi

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that after every two weeks, he has to appear before the NAB court in Islamabad for the crime he has committed to providing 100 MW of electricity from the Nooriabad Power Plant to Karachi.

This is how he has been penalized for serving the city and its people, but such cases would not stop him from serving the people of the province.

This he said while speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the 18th My Karachi- Oasis of Harmony at Expo Center on Friday. He was accompanied by the provincial ministers, Sharjeel Memon, Saeed Ghani, Nasir Shah, and Ikram Dharejo.

The CM said that his government under PPP mode had established the Nooriabad Power plant, which provided Karachi with 100 MW of uninterrupted electricity. He added that a reference was made for this service, and he had been facing the case at NAB court for the last couple of years.

Shah said that the decision of the court was reserved for the last four months and would be announced soon.

Talking about law and order, the CM said that the Afghan war caused serious law and order situation in Karachi. “This is why Karachi was ranked 6th in the crime index as the most dangerous city in the world,” he said and added the law enforcement agencies with the support of the people of this city crushed the criminals and restored the law and order.

The CM said that he was surprised how the terrorists traveled from North Waziristan and Laki Marwat and reached Karachi and attacked KPO though the Prime Minister had chaired an Apex Committee meeting at Peshawar just after the Peshawar blast.

Shah said that it was our intelligence failure, therefore we would have to strengthen it further. He termed PSL matches and My Karachi festival as proof of improved law and order in the city.

Murad Shah talking about the My Karachi – Oasis of Harmony Exhibition said that it was truly a historic occasion for the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry which has organized the 18th exhibition.

Shah also recognized the late Siraj Qasim Teli’s services and contribution to his wonderful city. He added that it was a great initiative of the Late Siraj Tel that he organized an international trade fair in 2004 and made it a yearly event.

The CM welcomed the participation of all the international and national exhibitors and the people of Karachi. He added that the exhibition was contributing to and promoting business activities and attracting foreign capital, which was the need of the hour.

The CM said that this exhibition has provided an opportunity for both local and international potential exhibitors to showcase their products, build partnerships, enhance their economic relationships, and expand bilateral trade. “Despite economic vulnerability, Karachi plays a significant role in Pakistan’s GDP, exports, and revenue and remains on the radars of savvy investors for bringing investments from around the world,” he said.

Murad Shah said that his government has been making all efforts to create a conducive environment by reducing the cost of manufacturing and fixing all the irritants which were restricting this growth potential. “We are also working on improving the cost of doing business which is a prerequisite for economic growth and poverty reduction and economic development,” he said and added that the role of exhibitions has become critical for any country and acts as a catalyst for boosting industrial growth, and stimulating economic growth, employment, and prosperity.

The CM congratulated Chairman BMG Mr. Zubair Motiwala, President KCCI, Mr. Tariq Yousuf, Senior Vice President KCCI, Mr. Tauseef Ahmed, Vice President KCCI, Mr. Haris Agar, Mr. Mohammd Idrees & Members of the KCCI Managing Committees and the business community for putting up great efforts and making this event a huge success.

Earlier, the CM cut the ribbon to formally inaugurate the three-day exhibition. (PR)

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By Franz-Stefan Gady

“Horrible and revolting” – that’s how 22-year-old British cavalry officer turned war correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and Pioneer newspapers, Winston Churchill, described in a dispatch what he saw when entering the ruins of the village of Desemdullah in the Mohmand Valley in British India’s Northwest Frontier (today’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwestern Pakistan) on the morning of September 22, 1897.

Pashtun tribesmen had unearthed the 36 bodies of fallen British and Indian soldiers, hastily buried a few days earlier in unmarked graves, and mutilated them beyond recognition. “The tribesmen are among the most miserable and brutal creatures on earth. Their intelligence only enables them to be more cruel, more dangerous, more destructible than the wild beasts. (…) I find it impossible to come to any other conclusion than that, in proportion that these valleys are purged form the pernicious vermin that infest them, so will the happiness of humanity be increased, and the progress of mankind accelerated,” a shaken and sulfurous Churchill jotted down in his notebook that day.

The Pashtun tribesmen, the forebears to today’s Pashtun insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had risen against the British in 1897 due to the division of their tribal territory by the Durand line in 1893, as well as the gradual British occupation of Pashtun lands. They rallied under the leadership of the Pashtun fakir Saidullah, nicknamed “Mad Mullah,” by the British, who declared a “jihad” against British India and rallied more than 10,000 warriors to his cause.

Pashtun warriors under Saidullah attacked forts and camps guarding the Malakand Pass and by doing so threatened British control of the entire Northwest Frontier. “The British held the summit of the Malakand Pass and thus had maintained the road from the Swat Valley and across the Swat River by many other valleys to Chitral,” Winston Churchill summarized the strategic importance of the pass in his autobiography My Early Life.

The British reacted quickly and assembled a punitive expedition, the so-called Malakand Field Force, to pacify the Pashtun tribes along the Afghan-Indian (today’s Afghanistan-Pakistan) border. The force included young Churchill, who for around $420 (in today’s value) per piece, wrote a number of dispatches under the heading of “The War in the Indian Highlands,” which were signed—much to Churchill’s consternation, since he wanted to become famous through his writing—“By a Young Officer.”

Yet, finding the mutilated corpses on that September morning put a slight temper on the “medal hunter” as he was sometimes dismissively called. Some of the desecrated dead he found in Desemdullah were young British soldiers of his age, perhaps bringing home for the first time the realities of war to Churchill, who joined hoping “like most young fools” that “something exciting would happen” while he was with the troops.

Churchill would later on sardonically boast in My Early Life that luckily for those, like himself, who were fond of war “there were still savages and barbarous peoples. There were Zulus and Afghans, also the Dervishes of the Soudan. Some of them might, if they were well-disposed, ‘put up a show’ someday.”

“After today we begin to burn villages. Every one. And all who resist will be killed without quarter,” Churchill wrote to a friend that September.

And a show the Pashtun tribesmen in the ten-mile long Mohmand Valley, located in the mountains to the northwest of Peshawar, did put up. In fact, they had beaten back the British-Indian force sent against them, under British Brigadier-General P.D. Jeffreys, which sustained 149 casualties. Churchill saw some of the British wounded himself with “their faces drawn by pain and anxiety, looked ghastly in the pale light of the early morning.” Even the general had received a head wound and wore a uniform covered in his own blood. “It was not apparently all a gay adventure,” Churchill would later write.

The battle was a setback, but the British—“the dominant race” in Churchill’s words—would wreak terrible retribution on the “the savages” and step up their even campaign of burning villages and killing everyone in their path who resisted. “After today we begin to burn villages. Every one. And all who resist will be killed without quarter,” Churchill wrote to a friend that September. “The Mohmands need a lesson, and there is no doubt we are a very cruel people.” In his autobiography he matter-of-factly noted how the British went about their business:

We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.

He goes on to note that whenever the Pashtun tribesmen would put up resistance the British would lose two to three officers and 15 to 20 Indian soldiers.  However, “no quarter was asked or given,” Churchill noted, “and every tribesman caught was speared or cut down at once.”

Whenever the Pashtun tribesmen would put up resistance the British would lose two to three officers and 15 to 20 Indian soldiers. 

Time and again he praised the endurance of the British soldier in his dispatches and compared them—true to his imperialist credo-favorably to their Indian comrades-in-arms. “The soldiers of India naturally feel the effects of the climate less than those from cooler lands. This, of course, the British infantryman will not admit. The dominant race resent the slightest suggestion of inferiority. (…) This is the material for empire‑building.”

The young war correspondent was also apparently not a fan of what today would be called a “hearts and mind approach” in dealing with insurgents, at least so he claims in My Early Life.  He dismissively talks about political officers, who “parleyed all the time with the chiefs, the priests and other local notables,” which made them very unpopular among fellow army officers.

He singled out one particular efficient British envoy who always “just when we were looking forward to having a splendid fight and all the guns were loaded and everyone keyed up, this Major Deane and why was he a Major anyhow? so we said being in truth nothing better than an ordinary politician would come along and put a stop to it all,” by seeking some sort of diplomatic accommodation between a tribe and the British.

True to his bellicose nature, Churchill conversely rather believed in the power of the dumdum bullet, a soft-point bullet that expands upon impact, and the well-aimed volleys of British and Indian soldiers, who, when they caught them in in the open, killed thousands of Pashtuns, and proved the British poet Hilaire Beloc’s truism right that “whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun [a type of machine gun], and they have not,” when reminiscing about the uneven clashes between imperialists and natives in the late 19th century.

Indeed, the campaign against the Mohmand tribe would come to a rather swift end in early October 1897, with the tribesmen agreeing to hand over their rifles and promising to live peacefully (at least for a while). Churchill rejoined his regiment, the 4th Hussars, stationed at that time in Bangalore. The punitive expedition had cost the British Raj 282 men killed or wounded out of a force of roughly 1,200. Pashtun casualties are unknown but some estimates are as as high as 10,000. In January 1898, the Malakand Field Force was officially disbanded and the soldiers returned to their garrisons.

Dismissing the entire region and its inhabitants as uncivilized —“savages impelled by fanaticism”—he did not expect his side or the enemy to follow the rules of gentlemanly (European) warfare.

While embedded with the troops Churchill saw “more fighting than I expected, and very hard fighting too,” the overall commander of the Malakand Field Force, Major-General Sir Bindon Blood later recalled. More than once, Churchill saw people around him killed (“The British officer was spinning just behind me, his face a mass of blood, his right eye cut out,” as he recounted in one instance.), endured the sight of massacres, the agonizing cries of the wounded, and the psychological toll of fighting, what in Victorian eyes, must have been a merciless enemy encapsulated in Kipling’s The Young British Soldier: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains…”

Churchill does recount on a few occasions in letters what today (and back then) without a doubt would be considered war crimes on the British side. For example, he saw how Sikh soldiers of the British-Indian Army torture and slowly kill a wounded Pashtun tribesman by shoving him little by little into an incinerator that slowly melted the skin off the poor man’s bones amidst his agonizing cries. The other side was not much better. “The tribesman,” Churchill wrote in a letter, “torture the wounded & mutilate the dead. The troops never spare a man who falls into their hands – whether he be wounded or not . . . The picture is a terrible one.”

While admitting to acts of barbarism on both sides during the campaign, he never condemned it, although he felt the need to assure his mother in a letter that he himself, during his six week stint as a war-correspondent, did not commit any heinous acts. “I have not soiled my hands with any dirty work,” he wrote to her.

Dismissing the entire region and its inhabitants as uncivilized —“savages impelled by fanaticism”—he did not expect his side or the enemy to follow the rules of gentlemanly (European) warfare he had been taught at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. As a result, it must have been easier for him to shed the horror of war, dismissing it as an abnormality in the conduct of warfare and something that would not occur during the clash of “civilized nations.” For him, a child of the Victorian period, war remained a game, best exemplified by Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem Vitai Lampada, coincidentally first published in 1897, the same year that Churchill was fighting on the Northwest Frontier:

The sand of the desert is sodden red, –

Red with the wreck of a square that broke; –

The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed his banks,

And England’s far, and Honor a name,

But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,

“Play up! Play up! And play the game!”

That war will be like a game of cricket, of course, turned out to be a fatal miscalculation; one that Churchill was not alone in making around the turn of the last century.

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Courtesy: The Diplomat (Published on October 24, 2015)

The post How Churchill Fought the Pashtuns first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Rosie Dunn

Mums of soldiers killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan want a public inquiry into the 20-year war, saying it was based on a bed of lies.

As Taliban insurgents reclaim Kabul, the heartbroken mothers believe their sons died for nothing and that no British soldier should set foot there again.

Sunday was the 12th anniversary of the deaths of two of our Afghanistan heroes – Sergeant Simon Valentine of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and Private Richard Hunt of 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh.

In an open letter to Boris Johnson, the mums call for successive governments to be held to account for the tragic toll.

Helen’s son L/Cpl Michael Pritchard was 22 when he was killed in Sangin, Helmand, on December 20, 2009.

He was serving with the 4th Regiment, Royal Military Police when he was shot dead after being mistaken for one of the enemy.

Helen said: “My life is one big mix of profound anger and sorrow made worse because the Ministry of Defence (MoD) lied to my face. They wouldn’t tell me the truth. I found out by accident from an Army padre Michael had been mistaken for an insurgent and shot by a British sniper.

“So much has been covered up to conceal blunders and mistakes.

“Soldiers have been forced to lie in inquests on the orders of their superiors. The corruption within the MoD system runs so deep.

“Bereaved families are seen as collateral damage undeserving of the truth.”

Carol’s son Sgt. Simon Valentine was 29 when he was killed on August 15, 2009, trying to clear landmines on foot patrol near Sangin, Helmand Province.

Simon served with the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and was a born leader, loved by all.

Carol said: “My life changed forever the day my son was killed, the grief eats you up daily and consumes you.

“I rarely sleep now, worrying if anything bad is going to happen to my other children and grandchildren. I was once a happy-go-lucky person.

“He said it was clear it was all about control of the oil and drugs out there. He died for nothing, and it destroyed my life.”

Caroline’s son Sergeant Gareth Thursby was serving with the 3rd Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, when he was shot dead by an Afghan policeman at a checkpoint in Helmand Province on September 15, 2012.

She said: “Our sons were sent to war on a bed of lies and 20 years on we are back to square one with the Taliban in control.

“It breaks me apart and enrages me that our soldiers’ lives were treated so flippantly, and I will never recover from losing Gareth.

“The bereaved mums are now all part of a club none of us want membership of but at least we have each other.

“On the days I can’t hold it together, they pick me up and I do the same for them when they fall.

“There are no words needed between us. We all share the same pain.”

Hazel’s son Pte Richard Hunt, of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welsh Regiment, was fatally wounded by an explosion while on patrol in Musah Qaleh, Helmand.

The 21-year-old died two days later on August 15, 2009.

Hazel said: “The families left behind from this dreadful war are stuck in a life sentence of grief.

“I am so tired of the lies and political jargon used to justify the losses of our men and women.

“Our soldiers were lambs to the slaughter and the politicians who sent them to Afghanistan are as much responsible as those who laid the mines and bombs.

“If it had achieved something we could at least say our boys didn’t die in vain. But their sacrifices have been for nothing.

“I will never forgive the politicians who used our sons as discardable cannon fodder.”

L/Cpl. Jake Alderton, 22, was serving with the 36 Engineer Regiment when he was killed in Sangin, Helmand Province, on November 9, 2007.

The vehicle he was travelling in dropped off a bridge in a night-time operation and he died of asphyxiation and drowning.

Mum Lesley said: “My son died because he was sent to war with inadequate equipment.

“That was even the verdict of the coroner at his inquest. The troop’s night vision goggles were not up to the job which effectively meant the driver had to drive blind.

“My family was destroyed. My 40-year marriage collapsed, my eldest son and I had breakdowns.

“Some days I can barely hold myself up and I suffer terrible flashbacks of my son’s dying moments. It’s left me with PTSD and panic and anxiety disorders.”

Caroline’s 21-year-old son Trooper James Munday was serving with the Household Cavalry Regiment when he was killed in an explosion while driving a Jackal vehicle in Helmand Province on October 15, 2008.

She said: “I have had amazing ongoing support from my son’s regiment but I’ve never been able to grieve my son properly.

“I have dreams of when he is a baby. I’m trying to hold him to me, but he keeps slipping out of my arms, drifting away from me.

“I had fight in me at first and then heartbreak sets in that never leaves.

“Five years in, my body gave up like an old feather mattress – springs bursting out everywhere and feathers scattering all around.

“I finally have an interview with a psychiatrist after having suicidal thoughts and self-harming.”

Fallen soldiers’ mums’ open letter to Boris Johnson

Dear Mr. Johnson,

There are 457 reasons why no British soldier should ever be sent to fight in Afghanistan again.

That is the number of heroic fallen soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, fighting for their country.

It’s a horrific death toll that doesn’t include the thousands who returned catastrophically injured, physically and mentally, and the growing suicide count.

Now we have left the hellhole of Afghanistan and the Taliban are taking over. Again.

What was the point in our boys giving their lives in a war we should never have been in? For our dead children and the bereaved families left behind, it has been a monumental and heartbreaking waste.

Now we believe our boys are owed a debt for their sacrifice, with an inquiry that holds every politician that sent us to war accountable – starting with the worst culprit Tony Blair.

Would he have sent his own son to fight on the front line? We think not.

He should be made to walk through a field of IEDS and feel the lottery of death our troops faced every day.

He and his cronies treated our military like pawns on a chessboard while back home it became a breeding ground for terrorism.

We were told the war was to clear out Al-Qaeda, keep terror from British streets and bring peace and stability to the Afghan people, but it failed.

If anything, all we did was poke the hornet’s nest and stir up hatred against us.

The invasion brought bloodshed to our streets –the opposite of what politicians said they were trying to prevent.

Britain is now more dangerous and volatile than ever.

Yet we are back to square one as the Taliban stand poised to rule again, compounding our heartache, and making a mockery of our sons’ sacrifice.

We believe that our country, our troops, and the bereaved families of the fallen have all been lied to, repeatedly. As bereaved mums we remain proud of our son’s bravery.

But we learned the hard way that war is about money and power – anybody who tells you otherwise is either in on it or is stupid.

This was always about profit and control, like every other war.

That is why we urge you to open a public inquiry, as we did with Iraq, to stand any chance of uncovering at least some of the truth.

We want to know who gained from this corrupt war and why our soldiers were sent into battle ill equipped and with kit not fit for purpose. So many blunders directly contributed to soldiers’ deaths, leaving just as much blood on the hands of our leaders as the Taliban.

The former head of the Army, Gen Lord Dannatt, has also called for an inquiry to spotlight the errors of the conflict. We back him entirely.

It’s a double heartbreak for us to be back where we started 20 years on.

The Taliban have done exactly as they said – sit out the invasion and wait for us to leave before returning. You may not have sent our boys to war, but as our Prime Minister, you owe us the truth.

What was it all for?

The families of our dead soldiers were lied to repeatedly by the MoD trying to cover up their secrets and failings.

We have long been thrown on a scrapheap and no longer know who we can trust.

The phoney rhetoric of past leaders has left us in despair.

Every politician that sanctioned Afghanistan owes us and we want reassurance not a single British soldier will ever be deployed to this godforsaken place again.

History has shown that it is too high a price to pay.

We know war is a dirty business but if you are going to play Russian roulette with our children’s lives, at least have the decency to give us the truth.

It’s the very least our murdered sons and their families deserve.

To honour the fallen, we must respect the living and we call on you as our Prime Minister to show you care with a public inquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Carol Valentine, Helen Perry, Hazel Hunt, Caroline Whitaker, Caroline Jane Munday-Baker and Lesley Alderton

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Courtesy: Mirror, London 

The post Anguished British mums demand inquiry into 20-year Afghan War first appeared on Sindh Courier.

It would be wise on the part of US President Biden to bring a closure to forlorn Afghan War which has proved to be America’s another Vietnam moment. The new president would have to abandon America’s so-called “Nation-Building” project.

Public Opinion

It’s been almost twenty years since the invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban regime by the United States and its allies. A peace agreement, now popularly known as the US-Taliban Peace Deal, was signed by the U.S. government and the Taliban on February 29, 2020, after more than a year of direct negotiations to end the War in Afghanistan that has turned out to be the longest war in U.S. history.

The agreement was signed following a seven-day reduction in violence, a period which required the Taliban to adhere to a “significant and nationwide” reduction in violence, and also required that U.S. and Afghan forces refrain from targeting Taliban-controlled areas of the country.

The deal is basically a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Under the agreement, “the United States will draw down U.S. forces to approximately 8,500 troops within 135 days and complete a full withdrawal within fourteen months. In return, the Taliban pledged to prevent territory under their control from being used by terrorist groups and enter into negotiations with the Afghan government in March 2020.”

Interestingly, it’s been seen as one of the most significant events of Donald Trump’s presidency; it definitely yielded him a lot of talking points during his presidential debates and electioneering.

Not lagging behind the suit was soon followed by his prime contender and, in one of his pre-election campaign essays, “Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump” published in March/April 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. popularly known as Joe Biden – who has recently won one of the most controversial elections of American history against Donald Trump – had also alluded towards ending [America’s] unending wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have, according to him, cost the United States “untold blood and treasure”.

The U.S. forces have suffered more than 2,300 deaths and around 20,660 soldiers have been injured in action. Not to mention the conflict has cost U.S. nearly $778bn since 2001.

Surprisingly, the Taliban have recently expressed their willingness to honor the peace deal and said that its February 2020 agreement with the United States is meant to give American “invading” troops a “safe passage” out of Afghanistan, insisting the insurgent group expects President Joe Biden administration’s “review” of the deal document will not disrupt it.

Therefore, in all its likeness, sooner or later President Joe Biden would be compelled to convene a meeting of the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room and acknowledge a stark new reality that this war has brought more embarrassment to U.S. than any other American war.

It would be wise on his part if succeeds in bringing a closure to this forlorn war which has already proved to be America’s another Vietnam moment.

Given the plethora of domestic and foreign policy challenges left by his predecessor, Mr. President must not waste this opportunity by being indecisive or by wasting time, like his predecessors, in the hopes of transforming Afghanistan into a semblance of a democracy able to defend itself.

The new president would have to abandon America’s so-called “Nation-Building” project for, this time, the United States could not afford to walk away from this peace deal after twenty years of futile fighting!

Tarique Ahmed Abro

Hyderabad, Sindh

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